Welcome back. We are looking at this class on Spiritual Warfare, and as we begin this session, I want to begin with prayer.

Oh Lord, we’re grateful for the knowledge that You are God Almighty, that no one compares with You, and we pray that You’ll be present as we look at the subject of spiritual warfare again, and we begin to understand the two realities that are part of the world in which we live. We pray it in Jesus’ name, Amen.

So—two real realities continued.

I want to begin in maybe a slightly strange place. We’re going to begin in the Old Testament with a strange story. It’s a story about Elisha.

You may remember Elisha the prophet, and he was somebody who was very aware of spiritual warfare. But there’s one small story about his ministry that I find really engaging when I talk about spiritual warfare. Well—excuse me—spiritual warfare.

So let’s begin. We’re going to be in 2 Kings, chapter 6, and let me just read through this passage.

Now the king of Aram was at war with Israel. After conferring with his officers, he said, “I will set up my camp in such and such a place.” The man of God—that’s Elisha—sent word to the king of Israel: “Beware of passing that place, because the Arameans are going down there.” So the king of Israel checked on the place indicated by the man of God. Time and again, Elisha warned the king so that he was on his guard in such places. This enraged the king of Aram. He summoned his officers and demanded of them, “Tell me! Which of us is on the side of the king of Israel?” “None of us, my lord the king,” said one of his officers, “but Elisha, the prophet who is in Israel, tells the king of Israel the very words you speak in your bedroom.” “Go, find out where he is,” the king ordered, “so I can send men and capture him.” The report came back: “He is in Dothan.” Then he sent horses and chariots and a strong force there. They went by night and surrounded the city.

When the servant of the man of God got up and went out early the next morning, an army with horses and chariots had surrounded the city. “Oh no, my lord! What shall we do?” the servant asked. “Don’t be afraid,” the prophet answered. “Those who are with us are more than those who are with them.” And Elisha prayed, “Open his eyes, Lord, so that he may see.” Then the Lord opened the servant’s eyes, and he looked and saw the hills full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha.

As the enemy came down toward him, Elisha prayed to the Lord, “Strike this army with blindness.” So He—God—struck them with blindness, as Elisha had asked.

Now, several things I want you to note in this passage as we begin examining spiritual warfare and the reality of two realities.

First of all, it’s a story about war. Now, the king of Aram was going out to war in the spring. That’s what they did back then, right? The kings were trying to expand their territory, and so they would attack neighboring kingdoms in the spring.

Wintertime, when the rains were frequent—and maybe snow—it was more difficult to get into battle. And so this was a time of war, and it was something that characterized life back then.

The goal was to not just expand your territory, but to take all the wealth of the neighboring nation.

And so the king of Aram is attacking. And one of the nations he’s going to attack is the nation of Israel. And he plots and plans.

Now, this is a day when they didn’t have satellites to tell them about troop movements. And so he’s just trying to figure it out. And he plots an ambush, and he gets his army in place because he’s expecting the army of the king of Israel to come by a particular area.

And what happens? Every time, he’s frustrated. It’s like the king of Israel knows what he’s doing.

And so the king of Aram comes to his main advisors, and he says to them, “Okay, who’s betrayed me here? Who’s on the side of the enemy?”

And you know, they respond with some fear, because back then, if you even looked guilty, he could kill you. And that’s what would likely happen.

And so they say, “Oh no—it’s not us! It’s not us! Rather, there’s a prophet,” they say, “and he is so aware of what goes on that he tells the king of Israel even the very words you speak in your bedroom.”

Now, if you’ve got various levels of intimacy in your house, the bedroom is probably the one where there’s the greatest amount of intimacy, right? These are the words you speak in the quiet—the words you whisper.

And so the king of Aram says, “If that’s the problem, we can do something about that.”

And what shall we do? Well, we’ve just got to get that prophet. We capture him—then he won’t be able to tell the king, and we’ll be able to be successful in battle.

And so—where is he? He’s in Dothan. Little village. Not a big city—may have been walled, we’re not really sure.

Sends a huge force there to surround the place. He’s going to get the prophet.

Now, what happens then is the servant of Elisha gets up in the morning, and he sees the strong force—state-of-the-art army, the latest in weaponry. They are there. They’re serious.

And the servant instinctively knows that they’re there because of his master, and so he has this—in some senses—marvelous response. It’s fear, right? He’s terrified.

He says, “What shall we do?”

I love that question. I love the question because it—you know—what’s he going to do, right? Is he going to try to sneak out, get through the enemy lines and get away? Maybe hide under their beds and hope that nobody finds them? Maybe gather the people of Dothan together and try to fight?

What shall we do? That this force that’s coming against us is more than we can handle. What shall we do?

Now—I want to pause here a moment, because even though we’re talking about a physical war that is historical—it was at a time in history, it was in a place, it was in a town—it’s, in some senses, a metaphor for our lives, right?

There are times when things strike us. They strike us with fear because it seems greater than we can handle. And that can be anything.

I know people who went through the pandemic and lost their jobs. I know friends who were infected, and their families said, What shall we do? They used the best modern medicine—and people died. People that I know. And probably people that you know too.

What shall we do?

Maybe it’s an economic downturn. You know, in 2008, it was a time of just crushing downturn. In fact, the church I was in—the last one, in Plainwell, Michigan—excuse me, in Grand Haven, Michigan—there was this huge recession. It was called the Great Recession. It lasted for a couple of years, and it was big.

And we sat there saying, What shall we do? Because we had just started raising money for a building program. We looked at each other, as we sat—my ministry partner and I—we sat there over lunch one day and said, What shall we do? Should we cancel things? Should we move ahead?

What shall we do?

Maybe it’s an illness. A good friend of mine is fighting cancer right now. What shall we do? The prognosis is not good.

Another friend is an alcoholic, and during the pandemic, he relapsed. And his family is looking and saying, What shall we do? This is bigger than we can manage.

Maybe it’s financial. It’s a variety of things.

But there are times when we feel like we’re at war. And what strikes us then is fear. And we ask that question:

What shall we do?

Now—what strikes me is Elisha’s response.

I mean, his servant is coming in and saying, “Oh, my lord, what shall we do?” There’s this great, powerful army—state of the art—and they’re after you, and they’re going to get me as a sidelight.

What shall we do?

I find the prophet’s answer shocking.

He says, “Do not be afraid.”

What? How can you not be afraid?

Look at what’s happening here. How could you be in this situation and actually say, “Do not be afraid”?

And yet, when you look at Scripture—in fact, if you want a really fun thing—get a concordance and just look up that phrase. You can do it online, BibleGateway.com. Do not be afraid. See how many times that comes up when God's people are in challenging situations: Do not be afraid.

It turns out that in Bible parlance and Bible wording, do not be afraid is something that’s applied to God’s people. That fear and faith are somehow incompatible, according to the Bible.

Many years ago, when I was learning to pray—I was in ministry several years before I realized I didn’t know how to pray. I’d been taught to exegete the Bible. I’d been taught to teach. I’d been taught to preach. I’d been taught a variety of things about church history. I’d been taught about, you know, some cultural issues. I’d been taught about all that stuff. I’m an incredibly educated person.

But I realized nobody had ever taught me to pray. I’ll talk about that more in a session—in a couple more sessions.

But it struck me that that phrase do not be afraid is one that is incompatible—fear is incompatible—with faith.

Several years ago, I had the opportunity to be in the Netherlands, and I got to see some of the great paintings by Rembrandt—a great artist from history. And this is his painting of the event that’s recorded in Mark 4 and some of the other Gospels as well, with slight differences.

But anyway, the picture here—unfortunately, I didn’t see this painting because it was stolen like 50 years ago, and nobody’s ever seen it since.

But the story in Mark 4 is one I used to use to teach prayer—visualizing prayer—that when you’re reading an event in the Gospels or a story in the Gospels, you can put yourself in the story.

And so I would have people close their eyes, and I would, you know, read through the Scripture passage with comments.

And in this one, it’s powerful.

The story is, you know, Jesus says to the people—he’s been ministering all day, and he’s exhausted—he says, “Let’s go to the other side.”

Now, I’ve had the privilege of going to Israel, and if you’re standing on one side of the Sea of Galilee, you can see the other side. It’s not like it’s a long way, right?

And so they get into the boat, and they start going on the sea to cross to the other side. And all of a sudden, a huge wind comes up, and a storm comes up—one that has these people, even experienced fishermen, in fear. Waves coming over the side. They’re bailing out the boat, and they’re trying to control the sails, as you see in the painting, and they’re trying to figure out what to do—and they’re afraid. They’re afraid.

Now, this kind of storm, I’m told, happens occasionally on the Sea of Galilee. But this time, it’s dangerous. Even these experienced fishermen are afraid.

And finally, in their fear, they go to Jesus. And where’s Jesus? He’s in the back of the boat—the stern—and he’s been sleeping there. Apparently, he’s so exhausted he doesn’t feel the rise and fall, the swell and the trough of the waves. He doesn’t feel the water splashing over.

And so when I’m teaching people to pray, I say: Feel it. Feel the wind. Feel the water. Feel the strain of the muscles as you’re trying to pull in the sails so they don’t catch the wind and flip the boat. Look at the other disciples and see their fear. And try to put them in that situation.

Well, they go to Jesus, and I have them picture: You’re the one. Picture yourself—you’re the one who wakes Jesus up and says, “Master, don’t you care that we perish? We’re going to die!”

And Jesus gets up, and he looks around, and he says, “Peace. Be still.”

And all of a sudden—everything is quiet. The wind is gone. The sea is calm.

And then we read an interesting thing: the people were even more afraid, because there was somebody who has that kind of power. But the response of Jesus is an interesting one.

He looks at His disciples, and He says, “Why are you so afraid? Why were you so afraid? Do you still have no faith?”

And I have people picture Jesus speaking that to them, and then have them imagine the storms of their life.

Well, this painting, as I said, is one of my favorite ones. And one of the reasons is because people who have studied the painting—and there are copies of it that exist right now—have noticed that Jesus is in the boat, right, with 12 disciples. But there are 13 people in the boat. Or Jesus plus 12 disciples—14 people in the boat.

And that’s because Rembrandt painted himself into the picture. And you’ll have trouble finding him. So the blue square is where you’ll find Rembrandt.

“Why are you so afraid? Do you still have no faith?”

And then it goes on to the statement the prophet makes: “There are more of us than there are of them.”

And I think, you know, if I’m that servant of Elisha, I would look around and say, “Well, did you sneak somebody in here during the night? ‘More of us’? What? What is this?”

And he can’t see it. And so the prophet prays—and here’s an important prayer for those of us who are engaged in spiritual warfare, one that we should pray—and we’re going to pray at the end of this session. It goes like this:

“Lord, open his eyes so that he may see.”

He wasn’t blind in the temporal realm. He could see everything that was going on. But he couldn’t see what was going on beyond what’s going on. And so Elisha is praying, “God, open his eyes. Open his eyes so he may see.”

Now, the reality of that other spiritual army is real. It’s there. He just can’t see it.

I’ve got a friend of mine who’s colorblind. And this is one of the tests that you give to test—to see if you’re colorblind.

Anyway, my friend can’t see the color green. You can talk as much as you want about the rich green of spring where we live. You can talk about the red-yellow-green lights on the traffic signals. For him, green does not exist.

Now, they’ve studied color blindness enough that they know you can correct that. In fact, he has a little red lens that he can put on his eye, or he can wear his glasses that have red in them. And he says if he wears that, he can see green. It corrects his vision. It’s just a little piece of plastic that you put on there. And he sees the reality that’s there.

Basically, Elisha is praying for his servant to get that little film—something that’ll allow him to see. And when he does, he sees the army of God surrounding the army that’s surrounding them.

That vision is intended to produce faith in him—not fear. Faith, not fear.

How are you doing in seeing the other world?

You see, if you have vision—if you’re aware that there are these two realities that exist next to each other (we’re going to look at that more in the next session)—but if you’re aware of that, and you see that there is something greater than what’s going on—something greater in the what’s going on, beyond what’s going on—that should produce faith in you.

One person I read put it very well. They said that it’s kind of like this: a little school kid gets off the bus, and at the bus stop is the neighborhood bully who, you know, knocks him down—sometimes punches him.

And so this kid is terrified of being at the bus stop, getting off the bus, thinking that bully is going to be there—and once again maybe throw him into the bushes or into some brambles that scratch him, etc. And so he’s so scared, but he’s also a little ashamed too, so he doesn’t tell his parents.

But one day, he comes home, and he’s crying in his bedroom, and his older brother says, “What’s going on here?”

And so the kid spills about this bully who’s attacking him at the bus stop every day.

And so the bigger brother says, “Okay. Tomorrow, when you get off the bus, I’m going to be there. I’m going to be hiding in the bushes. And if that guy tries to do anything,” he says, “I’m going to clock him a good one.”

And so the next day, the kid is on the bus, and he’s on his way. He’s on his way to the bus stop. And he’s excited. He’s thinking:

“Oh boy. I hope that bully is there, because he’s going to get his. He’s going to get it.”

It’s the same reality. The same war is going to be there. But now he knows that he’s got an advocate who can handle it.

That’s what this is all about—to be able to see the war, not just see the war, but see that greater is He who is in us than he who is in the world.

Let’s close our time with prayer.

Lord, open our eyes that we may see—that we may see where You are and what You’re up to. We pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen.

I will see you next time.

آخر تعديل: الخميس، 29 مايو 2025، 6:08 ص